work, we argue (somewhat flatfootedly) that selective incentives to participate in the CCP campaign spring from
three sources of human and natural landscape: the extent to which a locality is vulnerable to the risks of climate
change and variability; the extent to which a locality contributes to the problem of climate change by way of
anthropogenic stressors (like CO 2 emissions); and the presence of social and civic assets that capacitate a locality
for action on GHG emissions.
We’ve collected, analyzed, and mapped many indicators that estimate notions of local risk, stress,
and capacity (at various spatial scales). More recently, we’ve considered whether social and natural landscape
characteristics of spatial neighbors affect local willingness to mitigate anthropogenic sources of climate change.
Technically, from a collective action standpoint, it is irrational for a locality to absorb the costs of mitigation if the
valued benefits of action can be diluted by the emissions activities of spatial neighbors.
Our statistical results confirm intuition – localities most at risk (to the expected impacts of climate
change) are least responsible for the problem (in terms of CO 2 emissions), and localities least at risk are most
responsible for the problem. These spatial cleavages may underwrite federal government inaction on climate
change policy in the US. Many rudimentary questions and measurement objectives remain. And, applied
sociologists have much to contribute.
One of the great advantages of Federalism is that states and municipalities have sufficient autonomy to
experiment with climate change mitigation and adaptation endeavors. Organizational sociologists can inventory
and assess the various schemes developed by state and local governments to address climate change, and
identify least cost path solutions that minimize expected social and human costs that flow from climate change
and variability. In the absence of proactive federal climate change policy, collective action scholars can suggest
schemes and mechanisms that induce local and state experimentation. The future direction of climate change
policy in the US is likely underway in the laboratories of state and local government. Sociologists have technical
and theoretical skills to observe, measure, and analyze state and local policy experiments.